Posted on 11/02/2008 3:26:20 AM PST by Born Conservative
If the campaign trails of Barack Obama and John McCain seem arduous, consider that of Jackson Grimes. Three times now, he’s campaigned for the U.S. presidency flying a third-party banner, with maybe a sixth-place result eight years ago to show for it.
Maybe. He hasn’t confirmed that result; he says he’s just pretty sure he heard it from a reporter.
It doesn’t matter anyway. When you’re gunning for the White House, just making a good showing isn’t good enough. “I’m in this to win,” the Florida native said with distinctly British enunciation. “If I didn’t think I could become the president of the United States by being a fascist, I wouldn’t be a fascist.”
That’s right: Grimes is a Sunshine State-born Vietnam War veteran with an artificial British accent who failed at acting, spent a year on the New York City streets and now aspires to the Oval Office under the auspices of the United Fascist Union.
Fascists aren’t Nazis, as is sometimes assumed, but they do tout the teachings of two infamous dictators: Italian Benito Mussolini and Iraqi Saddam Hussein.
Suffice it to say Grimes has a long road ahead of him. Even though much of his platform would likely appeal to many different groups of voters. For example, he has a female running mate, supports a federal shield law to protect reporters’ sources, would decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, supports vouchers for public schools and supports many pro-environment policies.
Spending on national defense and emergency management would go up under his administration, but taxes on various things, including gas and cigarettes, would go down.
He would only offer recurring aid to countries that support the “general welfare” of America and would offer citizenship to “only productive people with special skills and something to contribute.”
And he’s charitable, often giving to The Times Leader’s annual Book of Dreams holiday fundraising campaign. “It helps the poor and the needy, and I was once homeless,” he said.
Often, though, he’s not even on the ballot. He’s on in 22 states this year. Pennsylvania isn’t one of them, and it hasn’t been in any of his previous presidential runs, even when Wilkes-Barre was the party’s national nerve center from the late 1990s through 2003. The headquarters is wherever Grimes is, so Wilkes-Barre snagged the singular distinction when Grimes was lured here from New York by members of a local “grotto,” the Facist Union’s term for party chapters.
“I liked Wilkes-Barre because I found the people were more friendly and open,” Grimes, 58, said. “Wilkes-Barre had a kind of energy to it, a kind of life to it that it didn’t have in New York anymore.”
Here, he met his secretary and partner, Heather Goldsmith, who was a King’s College student at the time.
Goldsmith connected with the party’s pagan affinity and gravitated toward Grimes. “The Pentagram flag by his desk by the bust of Saddam Hussein was also an occult symbol, so I thought this guy can teach me a lot about magick and witchcraft if I can get in with him,” Goldsmith wrote in an e-mail. “Learning he had no wife, a couple of days later I went back and asked him if he’d like one and moved in with him a couple days later.”
Grimes certainly isn’t a stranger to the occult. During his years in Wilkes-Barre, he wrote various letters to the Times Leader editor.
He’s also no stranger to racism. Wilkes-Barre City Council passed a resolution in 1994 denouncing Grimes’ actions for posting on telephone poles in the city racist fliers seeking members for the New York-based Aryan Racial Loyalist Party he headed at the time.
Despite Grimes’ fondness for the Wyoming Valley, the Elkton, Md., grotto offered to buy the party a building, calling it Saddam Hussein Hall. The chance to have a bricks-and-mortar headquarters was too good to pass up, and the party backbone – he, Goldsmith and Sally Parker, his running mate and the party’s deputy director – relocated before the 2004 election.
“They thought I could do better with the votes here in Maryland, getting on the ballot and things,” he said. “If you want my personal opinion, I like Wilkes-Barre much more.”
Grimes’ political aspirations didn’t evolve until his acting ones died. As a youth, his family moved to a small town in Indiana, but he soon ran away to New York. To make money for drama school, he worked as a “storm trooper” for the Fascist Freedom Front. He eventually became homeless and enlisted in the U.S. Army. Returning from war, he found he wasn’t cut out for acting, but realized “I have a talent for making money on these parties and turn(ing) around these third parties.”
He was offered the party leadership and has spent much of the past decade traveling and making speeches to raise money. His supporters can be unlikely – he’s spoken before the Flying Saucer Society and recently had engagements in Canada – but he sincerely believes in his efforts.
“I believe that fascism can put me in the White House,” he said while he was preparing to travel to an appearance in Cleveland. “I think people are gravitating toward any party other than the Democrats and the Republicans. … We need to get America overhauled, and fascism is the thing that can do it.”
at a Glance Major campaign goals:
• A Universal Price Index that would regulate the cost of necessities. “It’s like rent control but it’s applied to everything across the board.”
• Institute a worldwide military dictatorship government, known as Nova Roma, that reforms society into a corporate structure, called Corporate Statism. “The people will be regimented, disciplined and controlled and they will stop thinking of themselves as individuals and act as components of the corporate collective.”
• Create a “Transferable Work Point Card” to replace currency. “We believe in workfare rather than welfare.”
• “Promote a revival of the Republican Commonwealth of Imperial Rome and stand against liberalism, public corruption, decadence and Democracy in all the evil forms they manifest themselves in.”
I think someone needs to be medicated. Check out his pic on his party’s website: http://joanne21921.tripod.com/
One Fascist per election is enough.
It’s parody. I has to be. Their symbol is a satanic star and their leader has a Roman helmet... please.
I don’t think it’s parody: http://www.votesmart.org/bio.php?can_id=15772
Screen Actors' Guild, 1996-present
Activist, Impeach Bush Movement, 2007
Activist, Promote World Peace, Delaware, 2007
LOL! Figures.
Other LOL’s:
Education:
General Education Diploma, Ohio State Department of Education, 1991
(nothing wrong with a GED, but for a Presidential candidate?)
and
Actor, Portrayed Adolf Hitler on Star Trek
What, the Democrat party is too good for him ?
He wasn't enough of a moonbat.
“with maybe a sixth-place result eight years ago to show for it.”
Nope.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.